A plea for tolerance?

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Not sure quite what to call this - it's a comment I made on an earlier thread, where it was pretty deeply buried. I'm posting it as a separate comment because it's something I feel pretty strongly about.

Yes, I know - this is a sporking community. We are making fun of the Harry Potter books, and, at times, some of us can get quite irate in our discussions. But - please, please, can we refrain from getting irate towards J.K. Rowling?

Here's what I mean: I'm really not comfortable discussing the character of an actual human being just because I find her books frustrating. I'm a bit of a structuralist. The author is dead once a book has been published, and that cuts two ways. The author is no more privileged in his/her interpretation than any other reader, because the work belongs to the readers now. And there are limits to what we can extrapolate about an author's belief, personality, etc, based on the work s/he has written.

As angry as I get at the awful, mixed messages in these books, I think we must never forget that a real, vulnerable human being wrote them. It isn't right or fair to trash her while trashing the books. (Though I like to think we're not trashing them, but subjecting them to rigorous criticism!) And I'm really not comfortable with speculating about her family life and personality based on the words she's written. Though I do believe all real art is "true" in a deep sense, and reveals the heart of its creator, I still think the art has, and must have, its own validity. You see what I mean?

I hope to be a published author one day. Though I neither want nor expect Rowling's level of fame, I wouldn't like it if anyone psycho-analyzed me on the basis of my stories. I don't think any of us would - and many of us do some type of creative work. Would we like to be called "stupid cows" because a reader found our work stupid? The person is not the work.

So I think it's fine to discuss the image of God in Rowling's stories. I think it's fine to question the heavy use of Christian symbolism given the non-Christian content of the stories. Heck, I've done this myself, repeatedly! It's fine to discuss the mixed messages about race, bullying, authority figures, and so much more. But I'd rather not discuss the psychology and personal life of the woman who wrote the stories. J.K. Rowling is a woman trying to write, and raise a family, and live, in this real world. We shouldn't forget that, no matter how angry her books make us.

Comments

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

So, for the sake of this argument, let's grant that. Let's assume the (in your opinion) unconscionable crime of “serial dating” is codified by law and is furthermore equally enforced between the sexes. What does this law look like to you?

1) a) For how many days n must a person wait after ending a relationship before they can legally start another?

b) Is there a sliding scale such that a couple that dated for 1 year must wait for a minimum of n days but a couple dating for 1 year, 1 month must wait n + 1 days? What is this scale?

2) Who has standing to file suit? Is it only the “jilted” ex or can any bystander drag the malfeasor to court to halt the incipient moral decay of society?

3) What standards of evidence are required to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? How deeply into the suspect's background are authorities allowed to dig before they are considered to be overstepping the suspect's right to privacy? Is the suspect considered to have a right to privacy at all?

4) What is the penalty if found guilty? If jail, for how long? A week? A month? If a fine, how much? $100? $250? $1,000? To whom would such a fine be paid, the ex or the state?

Give us some numbers to work with, Brad. How severely do you think someone (of either sex, you claim) should be punished so that their debt to society is squared and they can move on with their lives unimpeded?

If you have no figures to offer, if you continue to insist that shaming is the proper sentence, the only conclusion to be drawn is that the possibility someone (nearly always a woman or girl) will be given a life sentence, however long or short that may be, of constant abuse, degradation, threats, and impairment in her ability to obtain work and act in the public sphere is perfectly acceptable to you.

That is the reality of how shaming works in our world. If you don't want to be understood to endorse that, tell us what you think the appropriate punishment is.


Your way is quick and easy censorship that I can't accept and shouldn't be forced to accept. Your heart is in the right place but you've decided (for me) that discussing a disreputable facet of a girl in a book promulgates a real-world dilemma, and suppressing my freedom of speech is the only way to fix things. It's not.

The 1st Amendment only guards against government curtailment of speech. We, your fellow private citizens, have no obligation whatsoever to stand by and allow you to spout bigotry/sexism/whatever without comment by virtue of the fact that you shot off your mouth first. Our free speech rights equally grant us the opportunity to confront speech we find unacceptable. Moreover, as private citizens we are not obligated to give you a platform to speak from in the first place. The owners of Livejournal, the moderators of this community, and the original poster would be well within their rights to ban anyone commenting on these threads, and it would not be an abridgment of our free speech.



(P.S. This: dating = “a disreputable facet of a girl” is what we all find sexist, Brad. Thank you for summarizing your stance so succinctly and clearly, as if we hadn't already lost all doubts.)

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

This: dating = “a disreputable facet of a girl” is what we all find sexist.

Thank you, Annoni. THAT summarizes the issue. I have no problem with bashing Ginny Weasley, but if she's going to be bashed it should be for recklessly tossing around hexes like a latter-day Marauder, not for enjoying masculine company. The former activity is worthy of criticism; the latter is not.

I also have no problem criticizing her as a superficial literary creation whose sole purpose is to be Harry's love interest, but that criticism would be as valid of Ginny Mark One, who was quiet and shy, as it is of Ginny Mark Two, serial dater.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your comments, annoni_no. I found most of it interesting reading, even if most of it is also irrelevant, exaggerated or wrong. :-)

I found your discourse on mob justice particularly significant, given as how I'm currently arguing elsewhere that the modern warfare waged by 'social justice warriors' on citizens for non-crimes is an indication of mob justice supplanting the rule of law. We agree on this, it seems.

What intrigued me most was your diving straight into THE FIRST AMENDMENT as soon as I mentioned 'free speech'. As a non-American I've always been a bit bemused by the reverence Americans accord their centuries-old constitution. Admirable in most respects, of course, but it seems to hold you up in others, like gun control. Speaking as someone who knows little about the USA subject (I gather the gun lobby is a big factor as well as obeisance to the hallowed 'right to bear arms').

Replace my 'free speech' phrasing with 'right to say what I think' or anything else that doesn't trigger your mental redirect straight to the American constitution and you should get the broader gist of what I was saying; that your finding my comments personally incorrect or offensive shouldn't restrict my ability to write them in this community.

(Particularly when you're wrong. :-))

I've love to continue this debate but your discourse on 'free speech' threw up a red flag for me:

The owners of Livejournal, the moderators of this community, and the original poster would be well within their rights to ban anyone commenting on these threads, and it would not be an abridgment of our free speech.

OP mary_j_59 was wrong when she stated that deathtocapslock is not a moderated community. My understanding is that it is 'largely unmoderated' but the owner of the community does occasionally act ... and it might be possible to be banned if one or more members got sufficiently upset about being 'offended' and decided that their feelings were more important than Brad's right to 'free speech'.

(The ease with which you pass the moral burden of 'free speech' onto your constitution and thus seemingly happily accept the potential loss of same on this community quite alarms me. That's frightening and anathema to everything I believe.)

So I'm not going to continue this discussion; there's too much chance that someone could agitate for my removal because of 'offence'. Maybe because they truly believe that they shouldn't read anything they don't like here. Or because Ginny needs to be defended. Or because only the American First Amendment matters, and it doesn't rule here. Or in a blessed state of self-righteousness, fuelled by feminist doctrine 101 and the hazy impression of my comments being 'wrong' in a forced and artificial comparison driven by a need to compel everyone to conform to their real-world beliefs in a forum dedicated to fictional childrens books.

I want to launch my own spoof series here one day so I don't want to tempt fate. I'm going to keep calling Ginny 'The Girl Who Dates' ... because that's how she was written. But I'm not going to fan flames by rebutting all of your spurious points and nebulous links to real world feminism. And it's not like I'm using the term often; the first and only time was a year ago, I think. I referenced that thread here as an example of something quite disconnected from Ginny's actual status as The Girl Who Dates. I'm not going to let your own personal mental model of the world completely dominate what I should be allowed to write (when I firmly believe you're completely wrong in how it connects in the first place) but I doubt the need to reference the title of The Girl Who Dates will come up too often.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

(continued)

But I will tie things up with your most important accusation, that you actually share with someone else (jana_ch):

This: dating = “a disreputable facet of a girl” is what we all find sexist, Brad. Thank you for summarizing your stance so succinctly and clearly, as if we hadn't already lost all doubts.

Let me clear things up for you. I'll rephrase: "Your heart is in the right place but you've decided (for me) that discussing a disreputable facet of a person in a book promulgates a real-world dilemma, and suppressing my freedom of speech is the only way to fix things. It's not."

Just a one-time fix for you so you can drop this claim that I'm a 'sexist'. Wow. That was *easy*!

I'll go back to calling Ginny a 'girl' in the future (because she is). As I've said before, I'd be calling Ginny 'The Boy Who Dates' if she was a boy. There's nothing sexist in what I've said (or believe). One of your greatest strawmen has been to wave your arms and deduce "Brad is criticising Ginny and she's a girl SO AHA! HE MUST BE A SEXIST!". No. Or using the fact that Ginny is a girl to connect to problems for women in the real world when those issues are quite detached from my observations of Ginny-the-person.